


Station V

by Venstar



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, BAMF Q (James Bond), Clones, Fighting, Gun Violence, M/M, Mention of Death, Original Villains, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22317214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venstar/pseuds/Venstar
Summary: In this sci fi mystery adventure, Q discovers that MI6 still has secrets even he doesn’t know and villains that lurk in the shadows. Q must solve a mystery, figure out how to save his agents and put up with R’s shenanigans. All in a day's work to save the man he loves...or whoever this is?
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35
Collections: 2019-2020 00Q Reverse Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my i don't know what year of participating in the 00QRBB and i've enjoyed every stressful minute of it again, especially getting to write to the most amazing GIF by @10kiaoi!!!
> 
> Shout out to @SpiritofCamelot for betaing 
> 
> Thank sweet baby yoda to the Hive Mind for listening to me yodel with whining after every word and idea i tried to wrestle with. Thanks guys.

It was legendary, Station V. The place no one wanted to be sent to. It was spoken of in hushed tones with despair written across people’s faces as they talked about their next assignment. 

“Please don’t let it be Station V. Please don’t let it be Station V.” It was whispered like a mantra before agents, secretaries and any other poor soul being assigned outside of Mi6 Headquarters.

When asked about it, Q was told various things. It was at the end of the world, it was where agents and other employees went to die. Q thought it was just a metaphor for a position where you were sent for punishment when you completely cocked up and tried to make yourself useful until you died or M forgave you. Q shrugged and went about his business. Perhaps he’d end up there in the end. He smiled to himself. Perhaps not. M hadn’t hired an idiot. 

Both he and Moneypenny had both been pulled from the trenches. Young, bright, fast, deadly, and as wily as they come. M had made sure that her two newest additions would be able to handle themselves in and out of the field as well as any qualifying agent. It wasn’t important enough for the Quartermaster to simply to build fancy new gadgets and bulletproof agent accouterment, in a sterile lab. It was important that the Quartermaster also knew what it was like to have taken a bullet while wearing the fabled gear of his predecessor. 

The new Q had the scars to prove he was more than just a pretty face with an enviable set of cheekbones behind a pair of thick spectacles. M had something to say about that before he entered Q branch for the first time.

“A word of warning. The only one I shall give you, as you endeavor to carve your place within this institution. Don’t tell them you’re anything more than a pompous, mealy-mouthed lab rat in short pants. Let them learn what you’re made of. And make sure you use a sharp knife to carve it into them.” 

He didn’t bother to turn and acknowledge what he had just heard. He nodded and activated the sliding door to his new lair and entered a brave new world.

Months before James Bond had gone M.I.A after another terrible mission with heavy physical and emotional consequences, he would whisper stories in Q’s ear of the mythical legend that Station V was. Lying in bed, wrapped in each other and cocooned in the relative safety of their duvet, Q felt the stories James told were full of fear and wonder, of searching for the lost city or a fountain of youth. He could fall asleep to that voice. Oh, how Q wished James were back in his bed, telling him tall tales of this mythical place. It was much better than the cold reality he found himself in.

Glass crunched under Q’s heavy boots. He pushed his thick spectacles up his nose. Same thickness, new frames. So, this was Station V. It definitely wasn’t what he was expecting. His flashlight bounced about the dark, cavernous room, catching strange shapes in its glow. Something moved at the edge of his vision and he swung around, whip-fast, gun in hand. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to locate the source of movement in the cavernous room.

“Who’s there? Show yourself.” Q held his breath and waited. There. The motion again. Q edged forward, his booted feet sliding slowly along the floor, as not to trip. The motion was coming from the right. 

Blorp, blorp, blorp. 

Q turned swiftly, still armed and at the ready. He brought his torch up and swung it around. In doing so, he almost turned his eyeballs inside out. How would he explain that to medical? “Dear Dr. Sorenson, I regret to inform you that I sprained my eyeballs at the sight of naked people in giant test tubes.”

“Hmm. That’s vexing.” Q murmured to himself. He lowered his weapon and holstered it...for now and slowly approached the intact class tubes and placed his hand against one. His torch reflecting back at him. "Just what were they trying to accomplish here?" Q whispered to himself. He jerked his hand away when the power to Station V suddenly came on, revealing the mess that the break-in had left behind. 

Q’s jaw joined his injured eyeballs as the next victim he would have to report to medical. With the lights on, they were all now able to see the damage, destruction and…

“Oh no,” Q said, he ran forward to one of the broken tubes. “No, no, no, no, no! Call medical, we need an extraction team!” Q knelt by the broken tube, a body half in and half out, bleeding from the broken glass of the tube.

A hand tightened on Q’s shoulder. It was the team lead. Tanner. “Q?”

Q paused his fingers on the body’s neck. “No pulse.” He glanced up, the slightly balding man frowned down at him. Moneypenny stood silent and staring next to him. She swung her torch, taking in the sight of the broken tubes Q had stumbled upon.

“What on earth?” She whispered into the grave silence.

Tanner sighed. “Well, that’s a shame.”

“That’s a shame?” Q asked, shocked at the blase response. “That’s a shame?” Q gestured to the body sprawled out at his feet.

“Yes. It’ll take time to rebuild him. If we can. I hope they didn’t steal the programming.”

Q thought he had repeated Tanner’s words ‘If we can’ out loud, but he was afraid it only came out as a squeak. Two squeaks as he tried again.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t prepare you for this,” Tanner said somberly. He left Q and Moneypenny gaping behind him to survey the rest of the damage.

“Prepare us?” Q asked. “You could have taken the bloody time to say something. What is this?”

“I’m afraid neither of you had the clearance until now.” 

“Clearance? I’m the Quartermaster! Moneypenny is M’s personal secretary! How did we not know about this? Anything M sees, Moneypenny certainly must know about it. Secretaries are notoriously nosy.”

“Oi!” Moneypenny turned her flashlight on Q, blinding him for a moment.

“And ill-tempered.” Q lifted his hand to block her light.

“Cheeky little thing.”

“Station V is something we can ill-afford to have many people know about. The Station personnel even live here.”

“But what is it. What is this awful place?” Q asked. He was going to have nightmares for weeks.

“Welcome to Station V, Q. It really is where agents go to die.” Tanner said, over his shoulder. His feet making horrible grinding, crunching noises. “What a mess. We’re going to have to take inventory.” Tanner pointed to the set of data banks at the front of the line of tubes. “Check that Q. It’s why we brought you...now. I don’t think any of your predecessors have been here before either. We can’t trust anyone else at this point. See what’s left of the station’s systems, what’s online, what’s working, what’s been stolen, what needs to be rebuilt.” Tanner’s voice faded as he kept walking.

“But. What? I don’t understand-”

The earwig Q was wearing crackled to life. “If you can’t do your job, I’m afraid I’ll have to look for a new Quartermaster. A dull business I can assure you.”

Q’s mouth snapped shut. “Of course I can do my job!” Q’s voice rose in pitch at the indignation of it all. He had never in his professional life been accused of not doing his job. “But what is this?” Q waved his hands in the air, encompassing the entire building. He stared at the high ceilings. “Is this a prison? Is this where we keep those who trespass against us?” It made sense to him. Criminals of Silva’s ilk couldn’t be contained in a regular prison facility, even a highly guarded one. They always found a way out. Maybe if they had locked Silva in one of these, it would have kept-

“It’s Station V, Q.” M’s voice poked through Q’s train of thought as her voice filled his ear with a dry businesslike quality.” Now, get to work. Moneypenny, you’re my eyes now stop standing around gaping, ignore our Quartermaster and fill me in.” 

“I guess someone has to clean up their secret little mess,” Moneypenny whispered to Q as she slid past him like quicksilver giving him a quick pat and a sympathetic eye roll as she continued down the long row of tubes.

He could hear her whispering as she left, trying to give a description of what she was seeing to M.

“I think there’s some still alive back there!” Q shouted to her retreating figure. She paused in mid-stride. Slowly her head turned. He pointed down the row. Ah ha. She had finally spotted what he had.


	2. Chapter 2

Q kept glancing back over his shoulder at where Tanner and Moneypenny were talking. Tanner had asked Moneypenny to stay with him but had shooed Q away with a direct order. Whatever it was that had survived at the end of the poor, unfortunate row of deceased...whatevers, had captured her full attention and she refused to leave. Q was elbows deep in trying to untangle the mess that Station V’s systems had been left in. 

Life support, genetic research, A.I. programming, memory programs, hard drives, and servers galore, oh my! Some of the systems still used FLOPPY disks. FLOPPY disks running programs, or trying to. Backup power was running, but if he didn’t figure out what the most important systems were to keep running, the power wouldn’t be enough to last until the main power had been restored.

“Q?” Tanner’s voice was quiet in his earwig from his position at the end of the row of tubes. 

Q still hadn’t applied his entire brainpower to think about what it was he was fixing. Leaking fluid of some sort from one of the glorified giant test tubes was soaking into his knees. He didn’t want to think about what sort of fluid it was. A quick glance down assured him that whatever it was, it was clear. Well, that’s a mercy anyhow. 

“Q!” Tanner called again, this time louder with impatience, bypassing the earwig. 

“I’m busy!” Q spoke around a long cord he had jammed in between his teeth. He glared down the row.

“Situation?” Tanner asked, this time quieter.

“I’m still busy.” Q jammed the purple cord into a slot, prepared to download whatever he could from the broken machines. “If you think these things have it bad, you should see what’s in here!” Q waved from a broken test tube to the console he was working on. 

“Save what you can, Q.” M’s voice crackled again in his ear. Still distant from her position in London. 

Q shook his head. “There’s too much damage.” He glanced around at the broken glass and the few blessedly unbroken tubes. “I’m also, not an undertaker. Whatever this is, you’ll have to start over again. From the beginning.” 

  
  


“If you think I am uninformed of any situation, Quartermaster, you’re welcome to my bloody job. Now, find a solution.” 

Q gaped at the empty air M left in his ear. Oh, he’d find a solution alright, just give him five minutes and a roll of duct tape. The good kind.

Tanner only looked at him with pity. “Come see what Station V really is, Q.” He gestured with his head to indicate Q should join him. “Perhaps then you’ll find inspiration to save it.”

Gladly, Q rose from his position and with wet knees and shins, he made his way back to the few pseudo souls remaining. No one had told him what was in the tubes yet, but they looked too real. A.I. was the only guess he could make now. His foot hit something and it skittered across the floor. He nearly dismissed it as a piece of debris, until he aimed his torch at it. Strange. The cylindrical shape was something one didn’t see outside of a ladies' handbag. He knelt back down into the muck and pulled out a pen and prodded the black tube of lipstick.

“Interesting.” He prodded it some more until he had rolled it all the way over revealing a red hourglass. His light caught the edge of the strap. He pulled on a glove and gently tugged at the end until a black leather handbag was drawn out from under one of the center consoles.

“Q?” Tanner called out to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just...something’s not quite right. There’s a tube of lipstick and a handbag.”

“Maybe from one of the Station agents?” Moneypenny asked.

“Could be.” Q pulled back from his inspection of the handbag. “Oh, dear.” 

“What?” Tanner asked, striding forward. “What did you find?” 

Q gently closed the handbag and set it gingerly on the floor. He pulled one of his most favorite diagnostic tools out of his bag of tricks and aimed it at the lipstick. His lips curved up on one side. A detonator. How clever. 

“Q?” Tanner had arrived at his shoulder along with Moneypenny on his heels. 

“It seems our vandals have left us a few clues to ponder as we fix the mess they left us in.”

Tanner looked over his shoulder at the image on the screen of the lipstick tube. His eyes darted back and forth from the image to the tube. He pointed at the handbag. “What’s in there?” 

Q aimed the device at the purse, to reveal to all that it was full of knitting needles, yarn, a block of plastique.

Tanner’s mouth grew tighter and tighter until there was nothing left, but a small grumpy line. “Collect it for evidence. See if MI6 can pull DNA off of it. Try to identify the logo.”

Moneypenny grinned. “Whoever this is, she’s my kind of gal.”

“If you’re into people making mistakes like this,” Q muttered. He secured the lipstick and purse in evidence bags and left them with the skeleton crew they had brought, ordering one pair to leave with the evidence immediately so they could start processing it back at the labs. 

Tanner waited until Q was free again and motioned him back with him to the tube he had been standing in front of. Q, along with Moneypenny and Tanner drew even with the glass and came to an abrupt halt. 


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you see now?” Tanner asked. 

Q felt his mouth open and close a few times. His world all of a sudden narrowed to one point, the sound of a rushing train filled his ears and the lips of his mouth that were trying to form words became numb. James. There wasn’t enough air in the ruined station. No. No.

“Q!” 

“I told you this was a bad idea!”

Q backed up, his equipment fell from his hands and the handbag fell to the ground, it’s contents spilling out again. A firm hand gripped his bicep. Inside the tube was a gently floating figure. A very familiar figure that had until recently been sleeping in Q’s bed and most recently listed as M.I.A. Maybe Tanner was right. Maybe rather than a prison, agents did come here to die. 

“007 is intact, Ma’am,” Tanner spoke.

M’s answer was curt. “Which one?”

“Bond.” 

“Which one?” Q asked, repeating M’s question. “There’s only one 007.” He stretched his hand out. Should he mourn? Should he cry? Should he punch the ever-living fuck out of someone? If so, who? James...

“Well, I can’t be sure if that’s a relief. He’s always the most difficult to bring back.” M continued speaking, ignoring Q’s question.

Q mouthed the words ‘Bring back’ to himself. “Hang on. I can’t...are you telling me he was injured in the field? That he’s not M.I.A. You’ve just had him stuck in here and will bring him back out when he’s healed?” Relief began to flood his bones. Oh Christ ever-loving fuck, he’d get his missing lover...boyfriend... well-kept secret back soon.

“No, Quartermaster,” M’s voice brought a knot of dread to Q’s stomach. “I’m afraid you have it wrong. I’m afraid you and Moneypenny never met the real Bond.” 

Never met the...what? The real Bond? Q’s brain turned itself inside out. He knew James as intimately as one could, even if they did have to share each other with MI6. Q thought he was going to pass out from shock at that point. “What?” He put his finger on his earpiece and shook it. “What?”

“This isn’t the Bond that you know. This is a version of Bond you may never have known. Every time an agent dies, we start from the beginning.”

Q’s ears began to buzz at the word dies. Dies...dies...dies...dies...dies...dead? 

M kept talking, no matter how much Q wished she would stop. “Our agents are too valuable to lose on a permanent basis. We keep them in stasis until needed. We update them from time to time.” M sighed. “Sometimes we DO lose one permanently. Not enough genetic material left to perform the restart. Our enemies can be very thorough if they don’t want us to find one of ours ever again.”

“These are clones?” Q asked. He shuddered. Wait, had he been sleeping with a clone. His eyes widened and he was afraid he might swallow his own tongue. HE HAD GIVEN A BLOWIE TO A CLONE? LET A CLONE FUCK HIM? WHAT EVEN KIND OF EERIE SCIENCE FICTION EROTIC MESS HAD HE ENGAGED IN. OH. FUCK. 

“Clones is such a tacky word. It brings up thoughts of sheep. We prefer to think of them more like a host, you could say, with a Bond subconscious. I’m not sure if it will be a relief for you to know, but the REAL Bond perished the night of his tortuous encounter with Le Chiffre.”

Q’s eyebrows winged up. He and Moneypenny exchanged looks. They were all familiar with the Vesper fiasco and what transpired. 

Moneypenny tilted her head and kept her gaze on Q as if he might have the answers that she was looking for. “After Mr. White saved him, I thought he went to recovery following the bollocking he got from Le Chiffre.” 

“That’s what we wanted everyone to think. Even he thought he had been rescued in time by Mr. White. When in fact, he succumbed to his injuries and we had replaced him with his substitute. All he knew was that he was in recovery. It was a seamless transition as most are.”

“So there’s no more real Bond. Just his everlasting facsimiles?” Moneypenny said. She crowded closer to the tube with Q. She moved her eyes up and down, studying the body in the tube. 

Q was torn between wanting to shield James’s body from her gaze and smashing her face into the glass tube. He shifted his weight back and forth between his feet.

“Correct. We had to start him over again after Turkey.”

“Wait, you’re telling me that when I shot him on the train and he came staggering back to MI6, I had actually killed him?” Moneypenny asked. Her face was full of shock.

Tanner smiled at her. “Yes, you killed a version of him. He does tend to die in spectacular ways. No matter what he said afterward, you’re a crack shot.”

This time it was Moneypenny’s turn to go silent and have her mouth hung open like a codfish. She opened and closed it slowly.

Tanner clapped his hand on her shoulder. “We meant to congratulate you, but it’s not something we were ready for you to learn yet.”

“You mean...he’s dead? Did he die? He’s died multiple times and each one is...not the one we knew?” Q placed a hand on the clear glass tube, staring at the obscenely handsome, familiar face. A face he had held between his hands...and legs at many an intimate encounter. He knew this face, this man in unnaturally peaceful rest, distorted by the liquid and thick glass.

“They all die eventually, Quartermaster. It’s just a matter of who we can and can’t bring back from the dead.” Tanner said gently. He stood staring with pity at Bond. 

“Wait...I thought he was holed up somewhere...drinking his brains out presumed M.I.A.!” Q was unable to even think the words, to put them into a coherent thought. Although the evidence or the purported evidence was right in front of him. Maybe Tanner was wrong. “Are you quite sure?” 

Tanner shrugged. It was then that Q got angry and he hissed at Tanner. “And no one told me? I’m the Quartermaster, they’re MY agents too!

“The drinking bit is part of his standard reboot programming. He’ll come back, swaggering no doubt into our lives again and believe he was in Tahiti or some such place. We got the idea from the Americans. After a rocky start to their Avengers Initiative. Usually, we just reprogrammed them with what they last experienced, fill in the day's news and then let them go off for a brief hiatus.” Tanner’s face twisted.

“But that didn’t always work out.” M’s voice crackled over the comms. 

Q glanced back down the row of tubes. At the permanent damage some of them had suffered and the cracked and empty spaces where an agent had once stood.

“So now the problem is that some of the unfinished host agents are ruined, is that it?”

M sighed through their earpieces. “Yes. Maybe permanently so.” 

“We’ve almost finished, ma’am. We’ve taken a brief inventory and are unable to locate one host. We’re doing a recount again. Once we finish that we will let you know where we stand.”

“Very well, Tanner. I’ll leave this in your capable hands. I have a cabinet meeting in thirty minutes and I must go and beg for the money to keep our lights on again this year. You have your orders.”

There was a click and then M was gone. Off to some meeting while Q and the rest of the team were left to figure out what remained of Station V. Moneypenny and Tanner moved on while Q lingered before Bond’s tube, watching the face of someone he loved bobbing up and down in whatever the fluid was.

It was a twisted version of an aquarium. The next three tubes next to Bond were intact, but Q didn’t recognize any of them. He walked slowly down the row until he came to the smashed and broken units. The damaged clones in various positions in and out of the tubes. It was too soon to tell what stage of completion they had been in. Q rubbed the bridge of his nose and wondered when it would be a good time to cry. Well, there was no time like the present. He continued his work as silent tears dripped from his face.


	4. Chapter 4

Q sat back on his heels and shivered. It was cold and damp in the damaged lab. Whatever life-sustaining preservation fluid had been used in the tubes had leaked all over the floors and Q was soaked in it. He shuddered to even think of it as amniotic fluid, but according to Tanner that was similar to what it was. It protected and nourished the hosts as they slept. Q made a face as his hand touched the wet floor again. His stomach growled. Well, good to know that whatever it was that was feeding the hosts, wasn’t absorbing into his system. On second thought, maybe it would have been better if it had absorbed into his system, then he wouldn’t have to stop to eat. He paused in his work, his eyes glazed over and his stillness caught Moneypenny’s eyes. 

“Q?”

“Hmm?”

Moneypenny’s long legs carried her over to him swiftly. “You’ve got that look in your eyes.”

“Hmm?” He tilted her head just slightly towards her, acknowledging her yet still thinking of the possibility of the fluid and how maybe he had finally found a way not to have to take a break to eat while working on the agent's equipment, updating the antiquated systems, hacking into satellites-

“Q!” Moneypenny snapped her fingers in front of his face. “For goodness sake, what on earth is passing through your head. Have you suddenly discovered how to achieve world peace or developed a formula that actually works on spots?”

“Har, har, har. Very funny Moneypenny. No. I was just thinking about the fluid that the hosts are kept in…” His voice trailed off as her eyes narrowed on him. “What?”

“No, Q.”

“But!”

“No. Real humans need real food and real sleep. Don’t you dare build yourself a little Q tube to recharge yourself.”

Q grumbled under his breath. “I’m pretty sure M has a copy of me down here somewhere. I could just borrow my own tube, right?”

“Q.”

Q rubbed his face with a wet hand. He’d been down by the empty tubes, after trying to identify who had been in them. He was hoping to bypass the main system and pull information from the container's internal systems. He wasn’t having much luck. All the tubes had on their hosts was the numbering system that indicated tube number, date of start-up and some other random identifying number. No names, no agent numbers, nothing. 

“Did you and Tanner get the Station stabilized?” Q asked, trying to distract her with the task at hand.

She made a face. “I think they should move everything immediately. They’ve been compromised once, they’ll be compromised again. Tanner is following M’s decision to stay put for now. So he’s trying to bring in what he can. The backup power isn’t functioning properly.” She smiled down at him.

He groaned. “And you want me to go take a look at it, don’t you?” 

All he got in response was a flash of a brilliant white smile. 

“Damn it. I’m Quartermaster, not a backup generator repairman!” Q gathered up his diagnostic tools and tossed them into his bag. “Send me Smithers. He knows his way around a generator. I swear to God the only thing worse that could happen is if this whole place collapses.”

Moneypenny spoke to his retreating back. “You know what they say about wishes right?”

Q rolled his eyes. With his luck, only the part of the building that the generator was housed in would collapse...and M would still insist he works through it until he managed to find a way to salvage the data from Station V and rebuild the generator with his bare hands using duct tape and gum. 

Q, Smithers and a few other of the lads that came with them worked on the generators, but it was to no avail. The power was cut, the generators were too badly damaged and all the yelling and swearing that Q was doing couldn’t put them back together again.

“How much time do we have?” M asked, her voice again whipping through his earpiece.

Q glanced up at Tanner, sweat, and oil was smeared across his face and clothes. He shook his head. Once the last generator croaked, which would be in oh...Q glanced at his watch in a couple of hours, that was it. Station V would be a dead stick.

“A couple of hours,” Q said. “That’s all I can squeeze out of them. Once that’s gone, the Station will go dark.”

Q listened for a response, but there wasn’t one for a minute. He poked at his earpiece, thinking his wasn’t working properly.

“Damn,” M said. “Tanner?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“We’ll need to salvage what we can and bring them back.”

Q sighed in frustration and ripped his hands through his hair. “M, you don’t understand. I don’t have the power to keep them online for a trip home.” He glanced up at Tanner and spread his arms in a ‘what can I do?’ expression.

M ignored Q’s outburst. “Initiate self-destruct of the remaining ones then. You understand, Tanner?”

“Self-destruct? You can’t!” Q was beside himself. “Tanner, no. M, please don’t do this!”

“It’s the protocol if you can’t bring them back, Q do you understand. Do it, and for bloody sake, find out which one is missing!”

With that, M disconnected, leaving a gaping Q, a frowning Moneypenny, and a stressed looking Tanner.

“What does she mean, Bill?” Moneypenny thank God was the one to ask the most pressing question. 

Tanner shook his head and pressed his lips together. “We can only take the ones that are whole enough to survive without power to their unit. The others…” His voice trailed off.

Q went from gaping fish to flopping mouth, gaping fish. “You can’t be serious? Leave them to be destroyed? Leave the...agents…” His voice trailed off. He jumped up and ran back into the cavernous room that housed the precious cargo of so many agents. Many of whom he had...thought he had personally worked with and others he had met when he was just a young stripling of a thing starting out in the depths of Q branch. The agents that had become his.

“Q!” 

Moneypenny came running after him, Tanner at a more sedate pace. 

Q spun on his heel. “We can’t leave them. These are OUR agents, I don’t care if they’re half-formed, half functioning ghastly copies of the real ones. These are MY agents. I don’t leave my agents behind!” He pressed his hand against the glass that housed James.

Tanner’s face was still grim and there was a placid flatness about his eyes. As if he had come to face the horror of their new reality and embraced it. “I have my orders Q and so do you. If you can find a way to save them, then do it. If not, we’ll initiate self-destruct when we’re clear.”

Q balled his hand into a fist and marched off. Oh...he would find a solution if he had to skin himself alive to power the damn pods, he’d find a way.


	5. Chapter 5

Thankfully Q didn’t have to skin himself, but his knuckles and knees aren't going to thank him anytime soon. Ow. Maybe his back wasn’t going to either. Either way, he couldn’t tell who was more surprised than he was when he finally managed to get four tubes of human copies out and away before Station V was destroyed.

M stood grim-faced at the end of Q branch as those survivors of Station V were brought in. The secret was out. Minions rose from their stations, from the insides of spy vehicles, paused in the middle of guiding an agent through some particularly troublesome piece of an explosive device. Even good old R’s mouth dropped. Her flaming orange hair was doing the hula dance as she rose up and down on tiptoe and then zig-zagged her way through the gaping minions.

“Back to work!” She snapped at one whose headset was dangling from his fingers. An agent squawking from the earpiece. “Q!” R hissed in his ear as Bond’s tank rolled by. “Is that?”

“Yes,” Q said, he kept his eyes forward and continued to march forward his jaw set. He feared that it would take an eternity to unclench it. He wanted M nowhere near his precious cargo. If he could have wrapped James in bubble wrap and stolen him away to keep him safe, he would have. However...this wasn’t the James he knew.

R whistled and skipped along beside him, her shorter legs keeping a dancing pace with his long stride. “What’s he doing in a test tube? Did you just rescue him?”

“Yes,” M said, from her position guarding the tunnels that the tubes were headed for. “Stop there, R. You don’t have the clearance.”

Q closed his eyes. That was the WORST thing M could have told his stubborn second in command. Keeping R out of this was something he didn’t want to add to his to-do list. Whatever. She’d keep herself busy trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, he had a large task in front of him.

“Oh, it’s like that is it.”

“Yes,” M said. She turned her head silently and slowly until here eyes just about lasered through R’s helpless body, leaving nothing but smoldering remains behind. 

Q shook his head as he marched past the two women in a massive stare down. Glad he wasn’t part of that. Unfortunately, R wouldn’t be kept out. Once she had the bit in her teeth, she’d find her way in, regardless of what M’s orders were. It would just be easier to tell her what was going on and set her to a task she could make herself useful for. 

Q knew R would be allowed to track down the miscreants who had broken into Station V and determine the damage they caused. Q wasn’t exactly sure who they were yet, but he’d find out soon enough, especially with R’s bloodhound nose stuck into it. There wasn’t even any security footage. What happened at Station V had stayed at Station V. 

“We could never have risked any footage leaking.” M had told him over his frustrated noises about no surveillance video, no CCTV footage anywhere. “Could you imagine?”

Q had tried to imagine, but he couldn’t. 

“Every agent would think themselves perpetually indestructible if they knew what was going on. Do you want that on your conscience? Agents toddling around, running purposefully into scenarios where there wasn’t any hope of escaping from?” M asked.

“It’s not like some of them don’t do that anyway.”

“Yes, well. Sometimes those aren’t worth bringing back.”

Night fell again, or so someone had informed Q. There were several uneaten sandwiches wrapped in plastic next to his elbow and several empty paper cups stained with tea. He made a face. Who would have brought him PAPER cups? He shook himself like a dog and picked up his mug. A real mug, that you made real tea in. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more. That he hadn’t even noticed that he was drinking from a paper cup or that someone didn’t know better. Either way, his stomach was growling and he better feed it before he passed out and was found in an undignified pile of person. 

Q had silently pondered that last sentence M had spoken since leaving Station V. That there was the possibility that some agents just never came back because M had deemed them too dangerous to bring back. Were these the agents M thought were worthy to continue on in the name of MI6? Q gave shiver at the thought. A creeping tingle had up his spine as they were cataloging the remaining survivors. 

Fortunately, he hadn’t seen a copy of Silva anywhere, but there was still the mystery of the missing hosts. It was up to him to figure it all out. He heaved a sigh. It was not like he didn’t have fifty other million things to do. He rubbed his eyes over his face and soldiered on. 

“Whuh!” Q let out a startled exclamation and dove onto the floor, as something striking his chair woke him. He rolled and came up on one knee, his own version of a Walther aimed at R’s heart. He blinked a couple of times, trying to remove the sleep that had glued his eyes shut. 

R leaned against his workstation and chewed her gum. She blew a bubble and let it pop. “So. Why do you have a gun? Did you find anything useful?”

“I almost shot you.”

“But you didn’t. Now answer the questions.”

Q rose up from his kneeling position and holstered his gun. He had gotten jumpy and had taken his gun and holster out of the safe in his office. “Target practice with your staff photo and yes.”

“Hmm. Gonna share what the results are?” She blew another annoyingly large bubble and then popped it.

“Did you suddenly become M?” Q asked, straightening his clothes and then his workstation. His ungraceful fall had displaced several of his papers. Oh, thank goodness, his tea was still on his desk. He grabbed it without thinking and took a swig as R wandered over to the tubes

“Does it count as sexual harassment if he’s the one naked and you’re not?”

Q spit out the mouthful of cold tea he had just sipped. “Christ, R!” He patted down the front of his jumper and swiped at his face. “Look at this mess.”

“I’m looking.”

R walked forward and peered in at Bond and then down the line of other tubes. Her eyes narrowed. “Interesting.”

“How’d you get in here?”

R raised her eyebrow at him. 

He sighed. “Yeah, alright. What do you want.”

“Data.”

“Don’t we all.”

R paced down the row, like a field marshall inspecting her troops. Today it was purple tights under a bright neon yellow dress covered with an orange woolly jumper. She stuck her finger out and took her own tally. “Is this all of them?”

Q shrugged and tried another mouthful of tea, hoping to get it into him before something else happened. “No.”

“Where are the rest?”

“Damaged beyond repair...or missing.”

“Missing?” R paced back, slowly, eyeing each and every one of the tanks. “Do we know who?”

Q smiled to himself. “I love it when you say we when you mean me.”

This time it was R’s time to shrug as she reached for his mug. He relinquished it and she took her own sip and grimaced afterward. “Too cold.” 

“I still have to sort through the forensics report to find out who did this and who is missing. The dead have been accounted for.”

“Did you ask M?”

Q probably looked at R in silence for too long, since she rapped her knuckles against his head. 

“You didn’t.”

“She saw them come in!”

“Wouldn’t she know who was there or not?”

Q hunched in on himself. He debated confronting M and tapped his fingers along his mug. No. His shoulders down and his fingers came to a stop. Spies and their lies. He would find out who was missing on his own while keeping M as far from James as he could. He turned his back to R and stalked away.

Q came back, after having splashed water on his face, his hair damp and curling about his forehead and ears, his cheeks red from the temperature of the water. He hadn’t bothered turning on the hot water. Mug in hand, he stood in front of James’s tank, container, petri dish...Q didn’t know what to really call it. The rest of the world had fallen away and he was left with just the steady beeping to let him know that life support was functioning and the dim blue light that the tubes gave off. James slept peacefully in stasis. It was odd to see him still and resting. His face slack in his unnatural sleep. 

“Do you even know you’re like this?” Q asked in the silence. “That for once in your life, you’re not risking your life, you’re not under fire, you’re not just barely held together by surgical tape and glue. You’re resting. You’re at peace. In a living coffin. Did you know you can rest now?”

The James behind the glass didn’t have any answers to Q’s questions. 

“What are you like now?” Q asked. “If I woke you up, where will you be in your programming? Would Vesper have betrayed you? Would Silva have taken everything from you? Would you be as you once were?” 

Only the quiet burbling of the container could be heard in the silence. 

“Would you recognize me?” Q asked softly, painfully. The most important question. He stepped forward and gently touched the glass separating them. “Would you still love me or whatever it is you call it?”


	6. Chapter 6

There were forces at work, behind the missing agents. No expense had been spared. The target had been hunted down long ago. People had died to gather intelligence.

Station V existed.

The Widows had been hired to do the research for the job, finding Station V. Clever, ruthless women who carried knitting needles in their crocodile Birkins. Needles that could create wonderfully cozy objects or paralyze an object with the toxins carried inside them. It depended on what their goal was.

They were waiting for orders in the antechamber of the man who had hired them.

Target?

A 00 clone and the cloning process.

Why?

Why make one when you can steal one? Why kidnap a 00 and brainwash them into doing your evil bidding? That technique was flawed, unreliable and very, very, very messy if it didn’t work. Why do the work to develop your own cloning process? Laziness. Someone had already figured it out, why bother with doing any work?

“Ladies, you will steal their research, their process and bring one back alive. You will bring it back to me. Now, go.” He flicked his hand and dismissed the women. 

They didn’t care, they were women, they were used to being dismissed. That was how they were so successful. You too have seen these women before and not even known it. Perhaps something exploded nearby or something was stolen. Anyway, you wouldn’t have paid attention to any of them, would you? 

The pair of widows assigned as the head of the Station V task force flew back to their base on Ryanair. It was easier to hide there. People ignored old ladies.

“Nastia, I don’t understand why we can’t just take a live one,” Myrna grumbled as she held the yarn that her cohort was turning into a yarn ball. They were squished together in economy.

Nastia softly answered her out of the side of her mouth. “They’re technically alive.”

“No, I mean one that’s up and running now. Why can’t we just go bash one over the head and take one of them?”

“Did you want to ask him? Because I’d rather live a bit longer. Hold your hands up, come on there’s a good girl.”

“That place gives me the creeps. He ain’t got to have us break into the land of fantasy to find a living agent. Lord knows there are several of them running around at all times. Probably one within spitting distance now. Why can’t we just go get that one? He won’t know the difference.”

“If he wanted one of those, he’d have said one of those, but he said he wanted one of these.”

“It’s ain’t natural.”

Nastia snorted. “When is anything natural.”

“My hair color. I’m serious, Nastia. What they did, what they’re doing, it ain’t right.” Myrna shook her steel gray locks.

“You’re not holding the yarn right, stop or it’ll slip. If he wants a ‘clone’ then he’ll get a clone, whether or not we’re the ones that do it and we already took his money.”

“I don’t mean him. I mean MI6. Who do they think they are. Playing God like that, making abominations?”

Nastia sighed. “Myrna, I swear to God that you’re putting entirely too much thought into this job and that’s decidedly NOT a good thing.”

Myrna looked around the antechamber, but no one was around them. Still, she leaned in close to Nastia and whispered in her ear. “It’s not right. What’ll it hurt if we steal this abomination and then destroy the rest? He ain’t interested in the rest.”

Nastia stilled under her words. “Myrna…”

It was too late. The pilot spoke. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ll begin our descent…”

Myrna did end up dropping the yarn and tangling Nastia’s work. 

“Goddammit, Myrna!”

Two weeks later, when all had been planned, plotted and paid for, Myrna still hadn’t given up on her argument about monstrosities, abominations, unnaturalness. 

Nastia worried that she would eventually convince the rest of their web to her side. Nastia shrugged. In their line of work, if someone was a bigger risk than the talents they possessed then they too became disposable. Myrna was still on the roster for the Station V heist. It was risky, but Nastia figured better to have the enemy you know with you than the enemy you leave behind who you think is your friend but will turn on you when you can’t see them. Or so that’s how the saying went. 

The Widows stood speechless when they finally breached Station V, in awe of their surroundings and the neat rows of ‘human experiments’ and ‘illegal clones’ as Myrna kept calling. Except for Myrna who muttered constantly under her breath even as they were breaking into Station V and dispatching the small skeleton crew of guards and personnel that kept the Station up and running.

Another Widow on the task force pulled her knife out of some poor schmuck’s throat. It didn’t come out smoothly. They never did. There was always a bit of tug, a little extra twist you had to do because: 

  1. You needed to make sure the wound didn’t heal properly.



  1. In practice, dummies never had the same stickiness as real humans did. 



That Widow wiped her knife against the side of her leg. “Shut up, Myrna. That’s the umpteenth time you’ve bitched about the end of days. It’s just a job. Get with it.”

“It ain’t natural Desiree! Look at them!” Myrna pointed with her rifle at the row of fluid-filled containers. With the guards and station personnel lying dead, broken and bleeding around them the eerie glow from the blue lights of the containers turned their blood purple. 

Desiree opened her mouth to argue once more, but before she could. Myrna finally lost it. She shot at one. The glass cracked and fluid burst from the opening. The man inside was violently pulled out through the broken glass and he lay bleeding and gasping in the open air of the Station. A fish out of water. A newborn baby taking its first breaths.

“Myrna!”

“He only said bring back one. Not all of them,” Myrna said before shooting the naked man in the head. She turned to shoot another container and another. Until she had quite a neat row of newly dead clones flushed out of their tubes.

Desiree opened her mouth to say something when she finally came out of her sudden shock, but a lone shot rang out in the time Myrna had decided to take a break and was grinning at her work. Myrna dropped to the ground. Nastia was behind her. Flecks of dark purple in her blond chignon. Desiree’s mouth opened and closed without any sound coming out. The other Widows remained frozen where they had been during Myrna’s tirade. 

Nastia stepped over Myrna’s still body. “You all knew the risks. She became a liability. Anyone else?”

The other Widows shook their heads.

“Are they dead?” Nastia asked. “Check him. Allison, check her.” Nastia pointed to a nude female crumpled at the bottom of the second container Myrna had hit.

Desiree ran and knelt next to the first clone that Myrna had targeted. She threw her bag down on the ground, items spilled out and rolled across the floor but she didn’t care. She reached for the clone to check for a pulse. There was nothing. Brown eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. She shook her head at Nastia. Allison shook her head as well.

“Should we try to resuscitate them?” Another Widow, small and frail-looking spoke up.

“No, Petunia. Damn. Fine. Get rid of the casings. Jane, Cosette, dig the bullets out and leave them. Remove Myrna’s body. We’ll feed it to the wolves. We’ve lingered too long and she didn’t leave us much of a choice. Carol, Nancy, take that one.” Nastia threw her hand out and it landed on the container closest to the door that had avoided damage from Myrna’s cleansing. Nastia bent down and rummaged across Myrna. She took her knife out and cut the straps to Myrna’s bag. “Take her drive, steal the data, wipe us from their system.” She tossed the bag to Desiree.

Desiree clutched Myrna’s bag wet with blood and clone fluid to her chest. “On it, Nastia.” She scurried away to finish the job, leaving Myrna behind her. 


	7. Chapter 7

Q spent the rest of his time putting together the missing pieces of the puzzle. Days turned into weeks. Who was missing, who had broken into Station V. Every day after he had been forced to go home, as soon as he was allowed back into the building, he would nearly run to stand in front of Jame’s container. It was all he had left. Him and the ghost of what was. 

Q couldn’t stop staring at James. He remembered their first encounter. They hadn’t quite gotten off on the right foot with each other, hell it wasn’t as if they had ever been cut from the same cloth. He wasn’t sure exactly how they got along, they just did...when James was alive.

This...person in the tank, was not HIS James. This was just a...whatever. A substitute James Bond that was torturing him by existing. His James was dead. Something Q needed to remember. This wasn’t HIS James.

“You know that’s not healthy right?” R asked.

“You’re not healthy,” Q muttered ungraciously as he was jolted from his quiet reverie. He turned away from Bond’s container and walked back into the main section of Q branch to set up his workstation. Had he only had the clones and Station V to focus on, maybe he would have figured everything out sooner, but no, the dead could wait. The live agents needed his help.

“You got anywhere yet?” R followed him.

“I went home, didn’t I?”

“Har. Har. Have you found the culprit? The supreme leader? Someone I can aim a laser at?”

Q glanced back down at his laptop and sighed. “No R, no lasers.”

“Just a little one.” She showed him the distance of an inch with her fingers.

“No.”

“Fine, a bazooka.”

“No.”

“You’re not fun.”

“Correct. How did you get in here again?”

“I have my ways.” R wiggled her fingers at him. “Hey, since you picked out one, can I pick one? I want a pet agent.”

“They’re not pets R and no, I didn’t pick one out. I knew James. This...isn’t James as you keep reminding me.”

“Well apparently that wasn’t James either,” R said with that brutal finality she had about her. She slapped her hand down on Q’s shoulder and walked away. “Call me when you find a target. I got a missile that needs testing! Later!”

Q ground his teeth together. Go figure R would just knock the sense right into him. His keystrokes for the rest of the day may have been a little more forceful than usual. He was getting close. Close to figuring out who did the damage. Who the missing clone was. 

The day came and went again, the labs emptied out and Q was left alone. Time to go back and check his programs, see if any more clues had popped up. 

This time he passed James’s tube, his lips tightened into a firm line. However, the pull was too strong and soon he left his workstation with the excuse that he just needed more tea and maybe a biscuit. He stood before the silent floating remains of James Bond and pulled at his lips. 

James had been a proud man in life, he wondered how he felt now. How he would feel if he knew that this is what he had become. A copy, grown without knowledge, led without knowledge of what he really was and fooled to become what MI6 wanted him to be. Well, at least he never had to go back through puberty. Q rested a hand against the glass and peered into the murky depths. Bond bobbed slightly with the motion of the fluid in his tank. His eyes remained closed, the brilliant blue that Q knew existed behind closed lashes remained shuttered to the world. To Q. His fist tightened until he could feel his nails digging into his palm. 

Shit. 

Q’s laptop pinged. He dropped his hand and turned, rubbing at his eyes. Finally, something. His fingers danced across the keys and the sleep fell away from his eyes. His hands stilled as the results of his search for who did it popped up. Q had taken prints off of the lipstick and handbag. He had also had forensics go over the bag and lipstick. While the prints were only partial, making the search that much harder, they finally yielded results.

Q dragged his hands over his face. Fuck. Oh yeah, they yielded results. Results he didn’t want to have to deal with. The Black Widows. A notorious organization of lady degenerates that were experts in explosives, hacking, engineering...killing. You name it, they did it. If you wanted a job done well, you hired some hack. If you wanted the job done right, you hired the Black Widows.

“What on Earth were they doing breaking into Station V?” Q murmured to himself. 

He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes darting back and forth in the shadows beyond the tubes. They could be here even now, as he reviewed his results. He shook his head. MI6 was built of nothing but shadows and dark corners. Best to keep moving forward. 

Bond’s pod still glowed from where it stood silently to the side. Even in his unnatural state, he still seemed an even larger than life presence, watching over Q. Or so Q’s fantastical imagination told him. If Bond were anything in Q branch, it was a menace that was always touching things. Equipment, experiments, prototypes...Q. 

Q got up with the pretense of checking on the pod, to make sure it was functioning properly. All systems nominal. Nothing damaged, nothing to indicate Bond’s sleeping state was threatened. Q sighed. If there was any time he wished they had Bond on hand, it was now. Q’s fingers fluttered over the control panel.


	8. Chapter 8

What would happen?

What would happen if he released this Bond from his sleep? 

His hand hovered over the control panel again while his mind told him not to do it. He had a team, they worked and lived without James Bond for a while now...Q’s fist closed as his brain reminded him that they had done all of that living while Bond had been dead and his clone had been sleeping. His brain also reminded him that THIS wasn’t the Bond he knew. 

“No. But it will be the Bond we did know,” Q whispered his reasoning to him. “Same thing.”

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stayed by the pod, internally fighting with himself. The not really Bond clone was alive, healthy and safe for now. Q’s pointer finger curled in on itself, away from the control panel. That had to be enough for now. He returned to his duties, although he wouldn’t lie and say he kept looking backward at the sleeping Bond. What if’s dancing in his head. He kept working until sleep overtook him again and he just had to put his head down.

Q woke to the sound of an alarm. “Fuck, R!” Q snapped out from his sleepy haze. A crick in the neck exploded, distracting him. He slapped his hand to his neck and let out a petulant “Ow.” 

What the fuck was that noise? Oh. His phone’s ‘you’ve been at MI6 for too long, it’s time to go home alarm’. Damn. Q silenced the incessant noise and inhaled deeply. 

Distracted by sleep-filled eyes, neck pain and his glasses askew. He barely saw the shadow move before he was moving out of instinct. One gunshot and that was all it took to wake him up. Okay, maybe it wasn’t R. She wouldn’t have missed.

A voice filled the air, taunting Q. None that he recognized but that seemed to know who he was. “Come out, come out, my little Quartermaster.”

Q’s brain scrambled for who would be so hell-bent on targeting him. The lights from the clone tubes cast the lab in shades of calm blue. The voice stopped just outside of the wash of blue. Q steadied his breathing and glanced at his workstation. Shit. His laptop was still up and running a search. He couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands.

“I hope we can get to know each other better.” 

Fat chance, Q grumbled. He unholstered his weapon and rose on one knee, peering out. One breath in, one out slow and steady. The accent wasn’t wholly British. Something slightly foreign about the edges. Q’s brain still filtered through his massive memory vault. 

“I see that James is still in good shape, the old bulldog. Even in death, he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot. Should I be jealous?”

The fellow seemed to know Bond as well. A former lover? Someone Bond had pissed off and now Q was collateral damage? Seemed likely. Q remained silent and looked for a way to escape. The door was just ten feet away, all he had to do was distract his mystery guest. Q finally spoke up, to cover for the noise he was about to make. 

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Q said loudly. He slid the lock to his phone’s screen off.

“You could say that. It’s my specialty.”

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” Q’s fingers danced quickly across his phone’s keyboard as he selected the appropriate apps. This better work, he muttered to himself.

“Ah. Well, I’d tell you mine, but you know how much power a name can have.”

Q gave a little laugh. “Who died and made you Voldemort? You know he died in the end, right?” 

One job. That’s all he had ever asked for in his entire life. One job. One stupid job that he could do for the rest of his life. Not one job that would mean the end of his life. He thought back to the choice that started it all. He could have been a doctor, a barrister, a fucking coffee shop owner. Something. Anything. But noooooooo, he had to grow up to be a Quartermaster. Join the Royal Army they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Become an officer. It’ll lead to a career. Use your computer skills for good, stop fucking hacking into every system because you’re fucking bored.

Gunshots landed dangerously close to his head again. He ducked behind a pillar and cursed again for the umpteenth time. He reloaded. Well, thank fuck for the army and the target practice he received. Q swiftly leaned out and fired off two rounds. He pressed his phone again and something whirred to life in the back of the lab, making ominous noises. 

“So did I.”

Q saw the shadow move and hoped it was enough. He jumped for his laptop, but the distraction hadn’t been long enough. The shadow turned and fired again, a cracking sound could be heard and the shadow cursed. Q yanked his laptop from it’s docking station and ducked, firing once. The shadow fired back and cursed some more. Q’s eyes widened as he saw Bond’s tube take a hit to the control panel and the suspension fluid came cascading out. Q popped up like a weasel and fired into the darkness, hoping to hit the shadow.

“Your aim is as poor as the choices you have. What will you choose, my Quartermishka? Will save your precious laptop or your precious agent?” The shadow’s voice turned coy. “Maybe you could come with me instead. Leave 007, MI6. We could be interesting together.”

“Sorry, I’m already taken!”

Q didn’t play ultimate frisbee just for funsies. Without thinking, Q threw his laptop far and long. There was a shout of surprise, as Q dove for Bond’s tube and slammed his hand against the release button. He snatched the vulnerable figure and caught it to him. With his back momentarily exposed, he gritted his teeth and waited for a bullet as he jammed his thumb against his phone’s screen again, initiating his laptop’s self destruct feature.

The fire safety systems switched on and the room was doused in a mix of foul foam and water. Q clasped his phone hand with his free hand and dragged Bond unceremoniously out of the lab. He winced at the damage Bond’s legs might be taking.

A rage-filled scream filled the air as the intruder began cursing in a mix of Russian and English. Q swallowed hard. The one agent unaccounted for within the destroyed tubes and bodies had a Russian background. Could it be? No. Q didn’t have all the facts, he couldn’t be sure. There were plenty of Russians that didn’t have to be a missing copy. Q’s brain distracted him again and demanded that at some point he call the copies clones, no matter what M said. He adjusted his grip on Bond and grabbed Barbara’s lab coat and office blanket she kept at her desk at all times. 

Another gunshot was fired over his head just as he reached the lift and waved his card over the access port. “Come on, come on!” He dropped Bond again, he had to, he apologized in his head. He ducked down with Bond pinned between him and the lift door and returned fire. The lift pinged open behind him and he mentally apologized to Bond again as he fell backward onto the floor. Q was sure he heard the sound of his head hitting the metal as he scooted them the rest of the way back and hit buttons to confuse anyone following him. The intruder made one last effort to halt their progress. His face was revealed in the bright overhead lights. Sandy brown hair in a grown out military haircut and heavy facial scars. Thick brows lowered over deep-set brown eyes as they lasered in on Q and his bounty. 

Q’s mouth dropped open as the door shut. 006. 


	9. Chapter 9

He tightened his fists and they shook with an impotent rage, like a toddler that had gone too long without a snack and then had their favorite toy taken from them. The Widows had made a mistake and he was not pleased. They had allowed someone to go with them that had destroyed valuable research. 

He turned and stepped over the bodies that had dropped where he left them after learning what they had done. No one got in the way of him and science. They had brought him the one clone he had asked for, but at what price. What price. Had they been successful, he would have asked for more. So much more. One clone was only the start. The Station was full of technology that he didn’t have and that MI6 wasn’t interested in sharing.

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” He muttered to himself. It was time to leave the warehouse that he had been using for the base of his operation. The shipping company it had belonged to was at the end of their real estate talks and a deal was about to be struck. No sense in being here when it was finally sold and the tenants wanted to make modifications. The smell of decaying bodies was becoming strong and they would soon be found anyway. “We have a mission, Alec. Dearest. We must press on. We must rescue your compatriots.”

He walked past his lone soldier and gestured with his hand. Thankfully, The Widows had managed to steal the programming files and methodology of restarting a clone. His lone prize had been...well...brainwashed is quite an appropriate word for what he had done to Alec and what he planned on doing with the surviving clones now that he knew where they were.

“Yes, Master.” Alec turned and walked a step behind him.

Master. Yes. He smiled to himself. He was the Master. 

From a distance, he watched his plan unfold. 

Finally.

He had wanted to watch his success and wired Alec with a camera and the night unfolded played out on his large screens. If he could be pleasured by sights like this every day, every night, oh what a fulfilling life he would have. One hand rubbed against his leg in eager anticipation of receiving all that was his. 

“All of it. Give it to me. Take them, Alec.” He whispered to no one but himself. “No!” The hand against his leg that had been ready to feel him finish clawed at his thighs. “No!”

It was going all wrong again. Alec. Alec was toying with his food. With the Master’s belongings. 

“No, not that one. Kill him, leave him. Take what’s mine!” He howled at the screen. 

An explosion filled his screen and when the smoke cleared, Alec was still alive, based on the movement of the camera. The Master’s eyes darted about searching and gasped as his view screen was filled with the image of a lift door closing on the flushed face of MI6’s Quartermaster guarding a clone. 

“Noooooooooo!” The Master’s voice echoed throughout the room

One clone, one single clone had escaped his clutches. They should have all been his. All of them. 


	10. Chapter 10

Q was pressed against the cold metal of the lift wall with a slightly chilly, wet human next to him. His hands slipped against Bond’s skin and memories of past times they had shared in the shower flashed by, consuming his vision. Hands and soap slipping around warm, wet bodies. Sighs passing between mouths. Heated air and pleasure being exchanged.

Q let out an involuntary shiver from the cold and was ruthlessly thrown back into the present. He cursed the lift to high heavens to get a bloody move on! If that indeed were 006, he too knew the ins and outs of the building and would soon make his way to the garage. Time felt as if it were slipping past him at lightning speed. Q closed his eyes briefly before steeling himself to deal with Bond’s unmoving form. How on Earth he managed to carry him this far was beyond him. How he was going to get him from the lift to a car, was something he needed to figure out fast.

“Vesper?” 

Q’s eyes flew open. Green met blue. Fuck.

Bond glanced up and down Q before poking him in the chest.

“Ow!” Q slapped the invading digit away and rubbed at the spot.

“I recall you having a softer sort of chest.”

“I’m not Vesper.” A tinge of jealousy colored Q’s voice.

“Obviously.” Bond shivered and seemed to take stock of his condition. “This is not Venice. Where are my clothes?”

Q slowly reached for Barbara’s items. “Yes, well, about that…”

Bond pushed himself up, although a bit wobbly. He was giving Q’s hand some serious side-eye as he brought himself into a sitting position. His hair was sticking out in several directions. 

“I did manage to snag you a lab coat and um, uh, blanket.” Q’s fingers snatched at each item. “But that’s not the important part.”

“Is it not?” Bond murmured. “Why do I feel like I just got out of a three-day bender?” 

He moved to stand and Q averted his gaze, even though he had seen James in various stages of dress over the time they had together. It didn’t feel right. Q diligently kept his gaze above waist level as Bond stood naked and proud in front of him. He made no move to cover his nakedness until Q threw the items at him.

“Here!”

Bond kept his eyes on Q as he caught the items to his chest. He wrapped the blanket around his waist and tried to do something with the lab coat. 

“Yes, well. You were a bit out of it. Anyway, that’s not the point...the point is that there’s an intruder and we have to leave.” Q’s brain scrambled. What was the point? Fuck. Bond wouldn’t know he was Q, that they had been something to each other. Bond still thought there was unfinished business in Venice. Was that where he was? Was Vesper still alive to him? 

“This is MI6,” Bond said as he turned slowly in a circle. “I know this lift.”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t Venice.”

“Noooo…”

“Did I complete the mission?”

Q adjusted his glasses and looked away. “You could say that.”

A large hand shot out and gripped Q’s wrist, holding it prisoner. “Well then, what would YOU say about it?”

Q squirmed internally but held fast. “I would say that you completed your mission and now you’re needed again.” Well, that didn’t seem to help. The hand on Q’s wrist tightened, grinding bones together. “Ow, stop that!”

“Where is Vesper?” Bond bit out, he yanked Q forward. 

Rather than fight back, Q simply sighed and stayed relaxed. “She’s dead. I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you. But she is.”

Bond’s eyes searched his for a brief moment and Q saw the look of anguish before it was covered by eyelids and then when those eyelids raised, the emotion was gone and in its place a cold and calculating, bitter look. 

“I’m sorry.”

“How?”

“She drowned herself,” Q said simply. “She had been manipulated and found herself stuck in a very horrible situation. She made a choice.” He hesitated. “And it wasn’t you.”

Bond’s nostrils flared before he pushed Q away from him. The only sign he gave of his distress at hearing that his former lover had died. He shook himself like a wet dog and regained his composure. Q wondered what would happen if he and the James he knew found themselves in that dreaded situation, where one lived and the other died. Anything was possible at MI6. Now he was experiencing a version of James’s loss.

“You said it yourself. This is MI6. You can walk out on any floor for yourself and check if you don’t believe me.” Q prayed Bond wouldn’t take him up on that offer, they needed to leave as quickly as possible if 006 was truly alive and in the building. He was probably either running up the stairs as they spoke...hanging onto the bottom of the lift car or in one of the many other lifts in the building as any other stubborn agent would do. He’d seen James do it often enough.

“And who are you?” 

“I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” Q smiled up at the older man, he couldn’t help it. One of them at least must feel like Alice.

“Who are you?” Bond pressed on, ignoring Q’s insensible answer.

The words he first spoke to Bond in front of the Turner came bursting from his mouth. “007. I'm your new Quartermaster.”

“You must be joking.”

“Why, because I'm not wearing a lab coat?”

“Because you still have spots.”

“My complexion is hardly relevant.”

“Your competence is.”

“Age is no guarantee of efficiency.”

“And youth is no guarantee of innovation.”

“Well, I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.” Q barked out a laugh and his eyes crinkled in the corners. “Well, that was fun.”

“Q’s an old man. You look nothing like him.” Bond paused as Q’s smile fell.

“I’m afraid that the old man passed away too. I took his place. Or I should say, I was promoted to his place.” Shit. Q forgot about Skyfall and what that might mean to Bond as the man seemed to come to a complete standstill.

“Vesper...Q...dead?” Bond took a step back and Q saw a slight shiver star tup. 

“You must be cold.”

“M? Tanner? Who else?”

The lift pinged and the doors opened. Bond swiftly moved to the side. 

“We have to go,” Q said. That was all he had. He gripped Bond’s arm and pulled him out on the garage level.

“If there’s an intruder, why are we running away?”

“To die another day,” Q hissed as he pulled. “Now, stop being a stubborn donkey and move it. Pick a car.” That seemed to distract Bond and give him something to do other than question Q.

“That one.” Bond said, he shook Q’s arm off and ran towards a sporty silver Jetta. Bond’s bare feet made strange slapping noises that echoed off the wall.

“Oh, now that’s inconspicuous!” Q huffed as he hurried to keep up.

“It’s Tanner’s and I know where he keeps the spare key.” Bond reached up under the wheel well and pulled a little magnetic box out. 

Q ran around to the passenger side and smiled, but that was short-lived as Bond unlocked the car door and jumped in, but left the rest of the car unlocked. The passenger door handle clicked back into place after slipping out of Q’s hand. “Bond. Bond, unlock the door!” 

And like a cat who is determined to knock over the dish off the counter no matter how many times you tell it now, Bond stared at Q as he started the engine. He deigned to lower the window about an inch though.

“I’m not in the habit of riding in cars with strange boys. Now tell me what we’re running from or you can stay here and face whatever it is by yourself.”

Q’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the Queen’s business and you don’t have the clearance to hear it!”

Bond kept his eyes on Q and put the car in reverse. “One, two-”

“I don’t have time for games!” Q pressed his lips together and stared grimly ahead. Oh, this was going to hurt. When he spared a glance in Bond’s direction again, Bond’s face had grown hard. There was a dangerous glint to his eyes.

“I see.” That was all Bond said. He popped the lock and allowed Q to get in.

Q made the stupid choice to get inside a car with an angry, literally half-baked double-oh agent. He wondered at some point through the hare-brained ride, whether or not he should have taken his chances with 006. He held onto his seatbelt with a death grip and prayed that Bond would soon come to a stop. Tanner’s poor little car did it’s utmost best to keep up with what Bond wanted to do to it as he drove carelessly through the streets of London. Q grimaced at the sounds the engine was making. 

“You’re making a mistake,” Q said softly.

Bond didn’t take his eyes off the road.

“Am I?”

“Yes.” Q swung his arm up and aimed his gun at Bond. “You left me armed and you’re torturing this poor car. Slow down and take the next left. We have to go back. You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand alright.” Bond jerked the wheel and sent them hopping over a curb, throwing Q against the passenger door. 

Q’s shot went through the glass on the other side of Bond’s head barely missing him. Bond ducked as the debris cut into his shoulder and cheek. Another jerk of the wheel and Q was plastered against Bond as an iron grip caught his weapon hand. Good. 

“Now who’s making the mistake?” Bond growled into Q’s ear. “Yeaaaaaargh!”

50,000 volts shot through Bond’s system and the car finally came to a halt...a half a block down from when Q tasered him. Bond’s foot had hit the gas as he jerked from the voltage. 

“Fuck,” Q panted out, his armpits and the back of his neck were damp with sweat. He pushed his hair out of his face and took stock of the situation.

Bond was a puddle of tasered jello in the front seat and while the streets this late were mostly empty, there were still enough late-night owls out and about that were starting to walk towards them. Q could hear them calling out, asking if they were alright. 

Q jumped out of the car and ran around to the driver’s side. He pushed Bond over into the passenger seat and took control of the wheel. No place else to go but his own. He glanced down at the wobbling form next to him. Served him right. Ignoring the strangers running towards them, he put Tanner’s poor car into gear and drove on.


	11. Chapter 11

Q left Bond where he lie, in a puddle of flesh and fuzzy, pink spare office blanket. There was no point in dashing back to MI6 with Bond in this condition. He needed him either alive, whole and willing, or knocked out, tied up and an unwilling hostage while Q played the hero in this story. Q compressed his lips together. He’d prefer the latter to be honest. It would mean less paperwork, and there was nothing Q hated more than paperwork. Paperwork in triplicate. He shuddered as he made his way through to his kitchen and locked away his gun and taser. Best not to keep anything out that Bond could find as a useful weapon. 

Q considered the set of chef’s knives his sister had gifted him for Christmas two years ago. He shrugged to himself. 

“I’ll take my chances.” He said to Maximus, his tabby cat that was sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Meow.”

“Yeah, I know. Not the best chance, but depending on how he stabbed me, I might survive it,” Q explained to Maximus. “He’s better with a gun than he is a knife anyway.”

“Meow.”

Q turned and knelt down to pet Decimus, his all-gray cat. Their all gray cat. She had tiptoed up to him and nudged his shins for pets. James had brought Decimus home on a rainy Christmas Eve when Q wasn’t expecting him, much less a warm, purring bundle of gray fur. 

“Surprise Q, Happy Christmas.” James had said, before pulling Q into him for a kiss. Decimus had purred happily between them.

Decimus meowed to him again and Q recalled where he was. “Don’t get me wrong, he could still do some damage. You guys should be alright though. I don’t think he’d kill his cat. However, I don’t think he remembers any of us.” Q pointed between the three of them. “I expect you to mind your manners if he does kill me in my own home. Don’t eat my face. I’ve left everything to you two and I feel like I deserve some dignity on my deathbed.”

Purring was the only sound he got.

A sound came from the open door of the garage. Q and both the cats turned at the same time to see Bond’s figure looming in the opening. Well, he’d be a sight more terrifying if he didn’t have the lab coat and fuzzy pink blanket on. Q considered the idea. Maybe less terrifying and more appealing?

Bond leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “I’ve been kidnapped by a man who has a penchant for feline company.”

“More like...counter kidnapped. You started it.” Q shook his finger at Bond.

Bond tilted his head and smiled his slow half-smile that tugged at the heartstrings of the few who thought they could worm their way into his life and change him. Make him a better man. Q glanced away. He knew that smile all too well and it was strange coming from a familiar face on a complete stranger. 

“I can make some coffee or tea and if you’re a good boy I can scrounge up a couple of chocolate biscuits.”

“A man after my own heart.” Bond clasped his hand to his chest.

Q snorted and stood up, dusting his knees. “You don’t have one.” 

“You wound me, Quartermaster.” Bond said, placing his hand to his heart. He sauntered the rest of the way in, his pink blanket swishing about his muscular legs giving off tantalizing views of tanned skin and muscles that flexed as he moved.

“Oh, so NOW you believe me,” Q grumbled. He moved to the stove and made a choice. He filled the kettle and lit the stove. “Did you want biscuits?” Q asked. He turned and found himself face first with a strangely dressed man who killed for a living. “Can I help you?” His voice came out breathier than he would have liked. 

Bond looked him up and down as if he might eat him. Q swallowed hard as Bond stepped closer and leaned in to whisper into Q’s ear. “My Quartermaster always helps me, doesn’t he?” 

Bond drew back until their lips were almost touching. All Q had to do was lean in, just a bit. He closed his eyes. There was an odd smell to him, almost chemical. It reminded him swiftly, who he was dealing with, or what he was dealing with. This wasn’t the Bond that Q knew. His hand flashed out and pressed it against Bond’s sternum, applying gentle pressure.

“I help all my agents, 007. Step back.”

Muscles shrugged under Q’s hand and Bond acquiesced to his wish. 

“First, I’m going to feed you and then I’m going to clothe you, then we’ll talk about what I need your help with. I hope you’re up to it.” 

“I’d prefer to dress first, then eat.” Bond narrowed his eyes. 

Perhaps now he was finally beginning to feel vulnerable. 

“Follow me.” Q left the kettle to heat on the stove and walked out of the kitchen. Q’s footsteps sounded loud and out of place as his cats followed silently, Bond’s feet making hardly any sound. It felt as if he were being chased by ghosts. He glanced nervously over his shoulders and frowned when Bond waggled his eyebrows at him. They entered the bedroom they had shared when James was in town. Their little sanctuary away from the world. “Stay,” Q ordered as he continued on to the wardrobe.

Q sorted through the wardrobe as he kept one eye on Bond. The room was mostly neat and tidy as usual, save for the green velvet armchair surrounded by a swirl of chaos. Books, clothes, slippers, discarded ties, a few mugs of tea, empty packets of crisps, charging cords, all topped by a ratty blanket that covered the back. A single standing lamp illuminated the chaotic corner. The bed was neatly made with a black and white striped duvet, books lined up like rows of soldiers on the shelves above the headboard, a large plain gray area rug lay on the floor and a few large prints he found interesting hung on the wall closest to his en suite.

Bond prowled about the room and paused at the green armchair. He drew a finger across the chair, the quilt that he had taken from Skyfall after Kincaid had forced it on him. 

“The missus said she’d be displeased if you walked your skinny little arse out of here without taking it.” 

His finger traced along the thick robe he usually wore when he stayed over. The same one that Q would steal when James was gone because it smelled like him. Bond flicked open the corners of the books, but he didn’t take the time to read any of them. 

“Here.” Q marched over to Bond with a bundle of blue in his arms. They were all items that James had left behind. A comfortable MI6 tracksuit, pants and socks. Q shoved the bundle into Bond’s chest and turned. “You can dress wherever. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Whose are these?” 

Q closed his eyes. Of course, Bond had to ask questions. He turned at the doorway to answer Bond, and of course, that was when Bond dropped his handful of clothing to the floor. “What are you doing?”

Bond shrugged. “Getting dressed. Are these yours?” Bond dropped his lab coat to the floor.

Q swallowed hard. He should go. Bond’s hands went to the pink blanket wrapped around his waist. He should really go. The kettle let out a blessed high pitched whistle and Q’s eyes finally rose to meet Bond’s. “No.”

With that, he spun on his heel and nearly ran out of the room. Once in the kitchen, after leaping over his lounging cats in his haste to reach the kettle and shut if off, Q rubbed his hands over his face as if he could just scrub it out of existence. “Fuck.”

He drummed his nails on the counter before waving his hands wildly in the air like a conductor of a complicated symphony. “Fuckity fuck.” 


	12. Chapter 12

By the time Bond had dressed in his own discards, Q had managed to get ahold of himself and had found the promised biscuits and the tea was ready. He watched Bond just as carefully as Bond was watching him as he sat at one of the barstools at the counter. Q pushed the plate and second mug at him. 

“So.” Bond said, after selecting a biscuit. He bit down into it and had the gall to chew and swallow before speaking again. “Why are we on the run.”

“A good question,” Q said, nodding. “I’m not sure if I have the best answer.” He paused. Fuck. “There was an intruder in Q-branch. They interrupted your ‘healing’ process. Something new that MI6 has been working on and one that we were trying out on you.”

“The calendar behind you says it’s 2019.”

Q turned and glared at the offending item. Betrayed by his own need for organization and Bond’s powers of observation. “So it does.”

“How long have I been healing? It was 2006.”

Q made a noise reminiscent of helium escaping a balloon. “Waaaaaass it?” He scratched the back of his head. “That’s probably why you don’t remember me.”

“Are you telling me that I’ve been healing since 2006? Was I in a coma?”

Q jumped at the excuse. “Yes. A coma. By the healing process, I mean a coma. Q branch had been working on some pretty revolutionary medical devices or strategies as you might call them when M decided to put them to use after your mission with Vesper went tits up, so to speak.”

Bond leaned back and Q could see the thoughts churning behind blue eyes.

“I wouldn’t suggest reading the news anytime soon if I were you. It all might come as a bit of a shock…” Q’s voice trailed off. “Not just local news, but world news. It’s just...not the same. We hadn’t quite worked out what to do about memory yet or how to play current affairs catch up. You understand.”

Suspicion lined every inch of Bond’s figure.

Q rolled his eyes. “Go on then, turn on the telly. It might hurt, it might not. I don’t have a medical degree.”

Bond stayed where he was and reached for another biscuit. “I’ll stay away from the news...for now, but only if you tell me more about who we ran from.”

“That’s a bit of a sticky wicket. You know the intruder. They were also put under this new process when their own mission went a bit...screwy. Alec Trevelyan, the former 006. I’m sad to say he turned traitor and I guess there was enough of him left to use this new process.” Q shrugged. 

Bond’s eyes widened. “Alec? 006? A traitor?”

“Yes. Look, I told you we developed this...healing process but memory recall or catch up hadn’t been really taken into account. I suppose they planned on just tossing you to the shrinks at MI6 and hoping for the best.” Q continued to lie. He crossed every bone in his body that Bond couldn’t see.

“And you’re saying Alec is the intruder and a traitor.” Bond still looked like he didn’t quite believe him.

“Yes to both. However, this time the traitor part might not be his own doing.”

“Am I the former 007?”

“Mmmm...we’ve considered filling the spot from time to time, but your number is still available. That is if you pass MI6 muster.”

“How thrilling. I can’t wait.” Bond crammed another biscuit in his mouth when Q’s mobile rang. “What’s that?” He asked with his mouth full.

Q glanced at the screen. “M.” He picked it up and Bond gripped his wrist, preventing him from answering. “What?” Q shook his hand. “Let go I have to answer that.”

Bond shook his head. “Don’t.”

“It’s just M.”

Bond smiled. “How sure are you about that?”

A cold sweat sprung up on Q’s head and upper lip. Fuck. Bond was right. He stared down at his phone.

“What did 006 want?”

Bond’s question stirred his memories. Q answered with one word. “Shit.” 

Whatever it was that Alec had been after paled in comparison to the fact that Q had just taken Bond and ran away, leaving the surviving clones alone and helpless.

“We have to go back!” Q nearly tripped on himself as he ran through his house. “We have to go back.” He ran to the kitchen and hastily entered the password to his gun safe. He had just thrown the door open when a hand shot past him and snagged his weapon. God damned agents and their quiet cat feet!

Bond grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “Well, that was stupid.” 

“Tell me about it,” Q ground out through his teeth. “Get off of me. Put that down.”

“No. We’re going to have a little chat.”

“We already have.”

“I don’t think we have.” Bond let go of Q’s shoulder and moved away from him slowly. 

Q rushed forward, catching Bond by surprise and shoving his shoulder into the barrel of his own gun. “I think we have and I need to get back to MI6. You can shoot me if you want to, but I have to go back. The other agents need me.”

Bond pressed the muzzle harder into Q’s shoulder. “I have no idea when I am or what’s happening or if you truly are who you say.”

“James.” Q pleaded with just one word. “I owe you...something, but not now. I have to go. You can stay here if you like, it’d probably be better. Safer.”

“You could be a traitor and Alec could be the savior.” Bond said quietly. “I don’t know you, but I know Alec.”

“You knew Alec,” Q said quietly. “He changed. He had his own agenda.”

“You could have your own agenda.”

“Yes. I do.”

“What is that?”

“Keeping MI6’s assets alive and whole.”

Bond pushed Q backward with the gun until he was backed up to the kitchen cabinets. 

“Is that what you have planned for Alec.”

Q nearly growled. “It’s what we PLANNED for Alec. What he’s doing, I don’t know. Data was stolen, assets were stolen, I think he was one of them. I don’t know why he came back!”

Bond struck Q across the face. 

“Ow, shit! What the fuck!” Q yelled. His cats ran for cover. “What the hell, Bond!”

“Your story gets more and more convoluted as we speak.” Bond grabbed a handful of Q’s hair and pulled his head to the side, the cold metal of the gun’s muzzle pressed against Q’s temple. Bond leaned in to whisper in Q’s ear. “What do you mean you don’t know why he came back.”

Q whispered back. “Touch me again like that and you might not live to see the next day.”

“I’ll touch you how I like, and die another day. Now, talk.”

Out of sheer stubbornness, Q kept his mouth shut. Even though Bond was an agent, a part of MI6, Q wasn’t about to spill government secrets. 

“Talk!” Bond drew his hand back.

Q involuntarily flinched and closed his eyes waiting for the strike that never came. He opened one eye. Bond was paused in mid-strike, his hand still in Q’s hair.

“I have an idea of who stole 006, but not why. I don’t know if 006 is still at MI6. What I do know is that the other agents in stasis at Q branch are either in danger or they’re dead already. I couldn’t save them all…” Q’s throat tightened and his voice came out small. “I couldn’t save them.”

Bond glanced away.

“James.”

Bond let his hair go and stepped away. 

“The others.”

Bond turned to look at him. “Fine. We check on the other agents and then we find Alec. We get him back...”

Q waited for Bond to finish that sentence. “And then?”

The look Bond gave him was fathomless. He was lost. 

“I can call someone. Someone we...I trust.”

“Do it.”

Q dug his phone out of his trousers and selected a number. “R?”


	13. Chapter 13

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to involve R in all of this. 

Maybe.

R chewed them out over their little incident. “YOU LEFT THEM? ALL FOR THE SAKE OF A PRETTY FACE AND A TIGHT LITTLE ARSE, YOU LEFT THEM BEHIND!?

“It is a very nice arse,” Bond had said, interrupting R’s tirade.

“I know, I’ve seen it. But that doesn’t matter. Q, do you even know if they’re still in the building?”

Q heard her moving about her flat. There was a loud crash and she cursed.

“No.”

Bond spoke up again and just in the life where they had known each other, he said something that he knew would irritate R. “He probably loaded them into a slingshot and fired them across the river so you can pick them up with a grappling gun.”

R stayed silent in the face of Bond’s statement. Oh dear, that did not bode well.

“R?” Q had asked.

“That’s...not a bad idea actually…” R’s voice trailed off.

Perplexed, Bond couldn’t help himself. “I was joking.”

“Of course you are. But if he broke in and stole them because you guys are idiots, then we just steal them back with our grapple gun because he’s an idiot.”

Bond stared at Q.

“She’s right. R, can you pull up the CCTV feed and project a path? I kind of blew up my laptop and I don’t mean with notifications.”

R cackled on the other end of the line, her cackling turned into hooting. “Of course you did.”

“Get a move on it R. They can’t think to stay in the city.”

“I don’t know, all I know is that NO ONE WAS THINKING TONIGHT. R out.” R ended the call.

Q had glanced up at Bond. “Well, let’s start hunting.”

“You blew up your laptop?” Bond asked, looking mildly impressed.

Q gave a dainty sniffle. “It was in sacrifice for the greater good.”

Bond’s face relaxed into what would be called jovial mirth on any other normal human being who hadn’t been trained to wear a mask. “I do hope I’m worth it.”

If only he knew how much Q would have sacrificed, but that’s another story.

They had been too late back to MI6 and the surviving agents along with their pods were missing. M was going to have someone’s head. He tracked Alec and the four surviving agents with the help of CCTV, Bond’s intuition and luck. Similar to the Skyfall incident, rather than leave a false trail, he tracked Alec’s and narrowed down something useful for R.

A dockside wharf where a shipping container was waiting for its precious cargo. 

She did have the best toys and the fuck it all attitude to use them. Q still wasn’t sure how she had managed to secret away so many...what was it she called them? Ill-tempered satellites with frickin’ laser beams.

“I think I’m in love,” Bond said as he stared at the back of R’s head as she stepped over the body of the man who had been behind the thefts of Station V. 

“Get in line sweetheart.” R replied, waving her hand over her head at them. She didn’t even bother to look at them. “If you wanna love someone, try nerd boy over there. Heard he gives great-”

An icy cold voice spoke up, interrupting R. “I’m afraid R doesn’t believe in love. At least, not in the romantic sense.”

Q’s shoulders instinctively drew up to his ears and he slowly turned to the speaker. “M.”

“Yes. I am, and you’ll remember that the next time you pull a god damned stunt like this.” She surveyed the scene of damage, not looking at any of them. “And I suppose you didn’t do anything to stop him, did you?”

Bond glanced at her briefly and just as cooly, but Q could see the irritated look in his eyes. “No, ma’am. The Quartermaster outranks me.”

“Hmmm.” Was all M said in response. 

“M’s right though. I love weapons, ill-tempered satellites, complex codes and the occasional strap-on with electro-shock capabilities. Don’t you, Bond?” R asked him sweetly.

Bond glanced at Q. “I take that back. Maybe I don’t love her. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome.

Q shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first to say that.” 

“R, would you give us a moment?” M asked. She marched up to Q. “Tanner will be along shortly. Bond, run along with her will you. Try to convince her that you have courtly manners up your sleeve and relieve her of that bazooka, will you. I don’t want the authorities seeing that.”

Bond nodded and turned, heading for the exit. He snagged R’s elbow in order to disarm her, but he brought his hands up when she held up a grenade.

“Try me, lover boy.”

Q watched as Bond was left speechless, never having encountered her in his original timeline. It was R that led the way to the exit. Bazooka in one hand and a grenade in the other. 

“Oi! Tanner! Wait till you hear what satellite I hijacked this time!”

Tanner’s sigh was loud and put upon.

The three of them disappeared from sight and Q turned back to M. Her focus was on the small row of surviving agents in their containers and the bodies of Alec and the one who had been behind the theft and had called himself The Master, before Bond shot them. It had been an awful thing to watch James and Alec fight each other. Titans in their own right, battling for survival. It wasn’t right. Alec was one of them...or had been. Maybe this was why M had never brought him back out of stasis. 

“The poor fool.”

“Alec or his whoever that guy was?”

“A disreputable scientist. One who found it easier to steal the works of others rather than find the answers for himself. But Alec, mostly. He didn’t know what he was doing. Destroying everything for someone he had been re-programmed to serve.”

Q hummed in response. “What happens now.”

M studied the scene for a few more seconds. “We can’t rebuild Station V. We have to hide it again.”

“And Bond?”

M turned her eyes from the containers to Q. She studied him just as thoroughly as she had the room. His mouth turned dry in half a second and he became afraid of what she might say.

“We never really know anyone, do we?”

“Oh.” Q kicked the floor. Surely there was a piece of debris that was in his way.

“Do I need to worry about you?”

Q kept his gaze on the floor. “I don’t know, do you?”

“I need to know I can trust you.”

“I need to know I can trust you.” Q echoed her words.

“That’s our lot in life, isn’t it. Secrets upon secrets. What would it have done, to have told you that all you had to do was wait for five minutes and your precious 007 would be returned to you.”

“I don’t know,” Q muttered.

“He’s not ready. Not now, not like he is.”

Q didn’t have an answer for that.

“I can see why you were scared. To lose someone you love.”

“And maybe lose them again?”

“This job has risks.”

“I think I know that.”

“Good.” M turned and began to walk back to the exit. “Then you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Ma’am?”

She must have heard the question in his voice. M stopped and addressed him once more. “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. He’s not the same Bond you knew. If you can tame him, then he’s yours.”

Q let out a bark of laughter. Tame him. No one could ever tame him, but at least he could keep him for one more day. 


End file.
